Monthly Archives: August 2018

In the 60 years since the FAA was established, it has fashioned a focus on safety and spurred phenomenal growth known and admired throughout the world, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao said at an event to celebrate the agency’s milestone Aug. 30.

There’s a reason superheroes have sidekicks; these envoys take care of every mundane detail so their bosses can focus on the exciting stuff. That same idea applies to the Fill & Fly factory program from Mooney International. Mooney hatched this apparent plan for world domination in Kerrville, and launched Fill & Fly at EAA AirVenture 2018.
Source: aopaFill & Fly from Mooney

ForeFlight introduced Sentry at EAA AirVenture 2018, and the small ADS-B receiver has found a following since then. At $499, it’s a good value and packs a lot of features into a small device. We took it flying in a Cirrus SR22 to see how it performs, and to compare it to Stratus 3, the other popular ADS-B receiver for ForeFlight.

Civil Air Patrol members in Hawaii were pressed into service during Hurricane Lane and directed to collect data with their cell phones to help provide more accurate damage reports to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Jim Payne and Morgan Sandercock caught one of the most powerful mountain waves in the world to shatter their year-old altitude record in a pressurized glider on Aug. 26. By the time you finish reading this, that record may have been broken yet again.

Slowly but surely, the aviation app landscape has changed over the last three years, as the market moves into a more mature stage and the number of new electronic flight bag (EFB) apps decreases. Whereas the market was once packed with dozens of small companies with similar apps, lately pilots have chosen between just a few big players. In fact, our latest surveys show that over 90% of general aviation pilots are flying with either ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot, or Fltplan Go.

That trend looks set to continue, or even accelerate, as Garmin announced today they have acquired Fltplan.com, including the popular flight planning website and EFB apps. Terms of the deal were not released, but Garmin says the Connecticut headquarters of Fltplan.com will continue to support the product line.

Fltplan Go already works with many Garmin avionics; expect more.

The motivation for such a deal is fairly obvious, but it’s worth considering how many complementary parts there are. For one, Fltplan.com has a large user base, especially among turbine pilots and charter/fractional companies. The company claims they have 165,000 registered users who create more than 6 million flight plans per year – over 50% of all N-registered flight plans. Do the math and you find that Fltplan.com customers are filing an average of 36 flight plans per year, meaning they are an active group. The acquisition instantly adds a huge new list of pilots to the Garmin ecosystem, which has been growing but still trails ForeFlight by a significant margin in the app world.

Beyond the new customers, Fltplan.com also gives Garmin a much more complete suite of tools, including pre-departure clearances (PDCs), eAPIS services, runway analysis, and Safety Management Systems (SMS). Fltplan.com is also know for extremely accurate performance models, which can predict flight times and fuel burns within one or two percent. These higher end features will be especially valuable when competing against ForeFlight, which has been pushing into the turbine market aggressively over the last year. The feature gap between the two companies is much smaller now.

The deal raises some important questions, too. Fltplan.com’s business model is quite different from Garmin’s. Their apps and website are free, supported by a combination of ads and premium services (the eAPIS service, for example, costs $249/year). Garmin’s apps, by contrast, require an annual subscription. Both companies offer iOS and Android versions of their apps.

Garmin’s website has been adding features over the last year, and might get even more with the addition of Fltplan.com.

Will the apps stay separate? Jessica Koss of Garmin says that’s the plan for now: “We have no plans to discontinue the FltPlan Go app, and view the app as a growth opportunity. We also plan to continue to grow and invest in Garmin Pilot and its existing services well into the future and view this as a significant opportunity for both Garmin Pilot and FltPlan Go.”

If that’s the case, we would expect some Garmin features to migrate into Fltplan Go and vice versa. For example, Fltplan.com’s performance models would be a nice addition to Garmin Pilot.

Another area to watch is website integration. Garmin has slowly been building additional features into its fly.garmin.com website, including device management and logbook entries. Might some of Fltplan.com’s online flight planning features come to the Garmin website? Koss says the company is still evaluating those opportunities: “It’s too early for us to announce anything at this time.”

This will certainly be an interesting story to follow over the next few months. The battle between Garmin and ForeFlight is heating up, and pilots will probably be the winners.

Michael Goulian aims for the top of every podium these days. Despite being edged out by Martin Šonka in the finals of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship race in Kazan, Russia, the American airshow star (and AOPA ambassador) heads to the final three races of the season in a better position than ever to win it all.

One of my favorite activities is going to a fly in. every year you can find a few fly-ins at local airports around the state and country. This one is a fundraiser for the EAA chapter on the field, you just never know who or what will show up. We have decided to use personal YouTube channels to allow others to add content. If you have a channel and would like to contribute shoot an email to

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the general aviation (GA) communitys national #FlySafe campaign helps educate GA pilots about how to avoid loss of control (LOC) accidents.A LOC accident involves an unintended departure of an aircraft from controlled flight. LOC can happen when the aircraft enters a flight regime that is outside its normal flight […]

9/8/2019The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) advises pilots about flight restrictions for Bahamian Airspace. At the request of the Bahamian Government, the FAA has issued a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) for U.S. aircraft and pilots entering Bahamian airspace in Hurricane Dorian affected areas in order to reserve airspace for search and rescue and humanitarian assistance.9/7/2019All ACAs […]

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